A student walks along the quad at Worcester College in Oxford, England on May 17, 2013.Jim Ross/The Globe and Mail
The job doesn’t pay a salary and it carries few duties. But serving as chancellor of the University of Oxford is still considered one of the most prestigious posts in academia, and it has been filled by the likes of Oliver Cromwell, the first Duke of Wellington and Robert Dudley, the apple of Queen Elizabeth I’s eye.
In a break with tradition, Oxford has changed the way the chancellor is selected and starting Monday, more than 30,000 Oxonians from around the world will begin voting online to choose the next office-holder.
The change came earlier this year when the current chancellor, former British Conservative cabinet minister Chris Patten, announced his retirement after 21 years in office. The idea was to make the selection process more inclusive and it has led to a flurry of candidates, including some unusual entries.
Almost anyone can run. Candidates don’t have to be British, or have any connection to Oxford. They just can’t be current Oxford students, university employees or elected politicians.
As a result, 38 people have put their names forward. They include a Zumba teacher, an Oxford tour guide, an Amazon fulfilment-centre worker and a Cambridge University student whose campaign pitch is; “Pick me, I promise to give you anything you want. Is this a bribe? Officially? No, but unofficially? Perhaps.”
The election used to be far more formal. Candidates needed to be nominated by at least 50 Oxonians and the vote was conducted in a ceremony at the university’s ancient Sheldonian Theatre, where a group of scholars dressed in black gowns cast ballots. While most staff and alumni were eligible to vote, the requirement to attend the ceremony reduced turnout. When Lord Patten was elected in 2003, around 6,000 people voted.
The new system has dropped the nomination requirement and scrapped the mandatory on-site voting. Moving the balloting online meant that 250,000 alumni were eligible to vote along with thousands of past and present staff. Anyone interested in voting had to register to receive a ballot and more than 26,000 alumni have signed up as well as 5,000 employees.
The first round of voting next week will cut the field of candidates to five. A second ballot starts on Nov. 18 and the winner will be announced at the end of the month.
“It’s a much more quasi-democratic process than it has been in the past. And that means that the outcome could be very different from how it has been,” said William Whyte, an Oxford professor who studies the social and architectural history of universities. He was still sifting through the list of candidates to figure out who to support.
The role of chancellor dates back 800 years and it continues to be confined to largely ceremonial duties such as handing out degrees at convocation and presiding over official functions. But as Oxford and other universities grapple with declining resources, chancellors have had to become fundraisers.
“A very, very big part of the role is the willingness and the capacity of the chancellor to go out and rattle the tin for the university,” said Dr. Whyte. “That’s something that 20 years ago wouldn’t have been thought of as the job of the chancellor at all.”
Last year, Oxford raised £222-million in donations, or $398-million. That was down from £249-million in 2022 and £369-million in 2021. The university’s endowment fund is also a relatively modest £3.6-billion. Harvard University has a US$53.2-billion endowment and Yale’s is US$40.7-billion.
The front-runners in the race are former British Conservative Party leader William Hague, who also served as foreign secretary, and Peter Mandelson, a Labour peer and long-time party insider.
They are up against Elish Angiolini, the principal of Oxford’s St. Hugh’s College, who is vying to become the university’s first female chancellor, and businesswoman Margaret Casely-Hayford, who is aiming to be the first woman of colour to hold the post.
Tanya Tajik, a business owner who teaches Zumba and rescues animals, is hoping to use her fitness regime to “help me manage responsibilities of a chancellor,” according to her candidate statement.
Matthew Firth, an Anglican minister with a background in astrophysics, promised to fight “woke ideology.”
“Many will seek to install a woke establishment candidate as Chancellor, but if you want to encourage the values of truth, unity, beauty, and goodness, please vote for me: your anti-woke candidate,” he wrote in his statement.
The university did rule out one candidate; former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan. Mr. Khan, an Oxford alumnus, is serving a 14-year prison sentence in Pakistan for corruption. The university said he was disqualified because candidates must meet the legal criteria to serve as a charity trustee. And under British law that means a trustee must be “a fit and proper person.”
Akaash Maharaj, an Oxford alumni living in Canada, said he was heartened by the chance to participate in the election.
During his time at the university Mr. Maharaj was president of the Oxford University Students’ Union and he worked closely with then-chancellor Roy Jenkins, who was a member of the House of Lords. Lord Jenkins provided invaluable advice when the student government tangled with the government, said Mr. Maharaj.
“Precisely because the office of the chancellor has been stripped of all formal power, it retains great social power to build bridges between the University and unlikely allies in society, the economy and public life,” he said.